Fujitsu Interstage BPM Version 11 Lets Businesses Proactively "Sense and Respond" to Change

SUNNYVALE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/08/09 -- Fujitsu today announced in North America the release of Interstage(R) Business Process Manager (BPM) Version 11, offering enhanced "Sense and Respond" capabilities that let users proactively address changing business requirements. The latest release of Interstage BPM, which is also optimized to be offered via the Cloud, provides teams involved in collaborative, highly dynamic processes with past performance data and workload predictors, as well as with the flexibility to veer from established process paths to find more efficient ways to get work done. It is ideal for processes related to project management, case management, and new product introductions. Interstage BPM Version 11 delivers complete visibility across the end-to-end business process -- both the structured and unstructured segments. It captures these unpredictable, hybrid collaborative process patterns as they are being established -- thereby uncovering processes that really work for the business.

News Highlights
According to a Gartner report(1), 60 percent of C-level executives believe current IT solutions constrain choice and the ability to execute necessary business changes.

• Interstage BPM Version 11 provides business managers with detailed, real-time insight into how teams are performing against metrics and milestones. They are equipped to make quick changes to processes and veer from a previously defined structured process in order to get work done more efficiently and arrive at process patterns that really work for the business. Teams can thus work productively without having to model a complete process. Managers can assign work to team members to adapt to changes in situations, and in the background, Interstage BPM automatically captures these dynamic events. In this way, business team members implicitly participate in defining the process based on what actually works.
• Interstage BPM Version 11 visualizes these hybrid process patterns -- a combination of structured and unstructured process segments -- letting teams see over time how they can significantly improve their processes, even as they cross over from an enterprise to business partner organizations. With visual maps and metrics that highlight process bottlenecks and inefficiencies, business users are empowered to eliminate wasted time and effort, reduce the cost of products and services, and provide their customers with a richer experience.

Key Enhancements and Benefits

• 360 degree performance views help users immediately respond to business change -- An enhanced, unified dashboard presents snapshots of and instant access to all tasks, processes, reports, KPIs, and alerts, so teams can respond immediately to changing business requirements.
• Performance-based tasking recommendations help identify in real-time the right person for the job -- Managers can review past performance metrics related to a particular task before assigning a new task.
• Recommendations for alert and notification thresholds based on past performance data help set realistic customer SLAs -- For example, if a task takes an average of three days to complete, the system automatically recommends a due date three days after the task is assigned to a team member.
• Workload predictors facilitate team performance optimization -- Team members receive a list of tasks that are likely to be assigned to them, and managers can review forecasted tasks for each team member before deciding to assign additional tasks.
• Team managers can make ad hoc decisions on task assignments to address changing business needs -- Business users are no longer bound to the processes that were initially modeled. The software captures the "real" process as it unfolds and provides the option to standardize on it. In this way, business users are implicitly participating in defining processes within the organization.
• Richer, goal-oriented project management capabilities alert teams to potential issues -- Teams can define phases and milestones for projects, visually represent these in process diagrams, and easily see the processes that have met or missed target dates.
• Tasks can be delivered on-the-go to facilitate getting work done anytime, anywhere -- Tasks can be delivered via mobile phone, PDA, email, a portal of choice, or any other RSS client. Tasks can also be easily added to calendars.
• In combination with patented process pattern discovery capabilities, the enhanced analytics reveals existing processes as they really are, providing insight for process refinement -- The software provides end-to-end visibility across hybrid processes comprising of pre-defined and dynamically created steps.
• Process collaboration and knowledge-sharing help build best practices -- Business users can leverage process wikis, process outlining capabilities, and the ability to create and share "process snippets" to enable better collaboration and sharing of process knowledge. With process outlining, Business users can easily articulate the steps in a process as a bulleted list of activities that Interstage BPM will automatically convert into a process diagram. This simplifies communication between business and IT.
• Advanced multi-tenant capabilities make shared services organizations and centers of excellence more cost-effective and efficient -- Enhanced multi-tenancy helps organizations address line-of-business-specific process improvement initiatives without compromising on security or performance. The Fujitsu Cloud BPM platform (www.interstagebpm.com) also leverages these capabilities to provide enterprises with their own secure BPM space.

Quotes

Masato Nitta, President of Middleware Business Unit, Fujitsu Limited:
"Our latest release of Interstage BPM was designed to provide a dynamic BPM environment that allows teams to adapt to unpredictable and changing business requirements. They can then visualize these adaptations so they can continually refine the process model. This flexibility improves collaboration and makes teams more agile, dramatically improving efficiency and productivity."

Michele Cantara, Gartner:
"The ability to visualize hybrid process patterns involving structured and unstructured process segments is powerful. BPM lets organizations actively monitor and manage these processes and learn from them, as well as facilitate collaborative process innovation. Over time, some of the ad hoc process automation built to guide the unstructured processes may harden into more structured processes as the organization identifies helpful work practices from its experiences. When these capabilities are available via the Cloud, they are more broadly available and foster widespread collaboration."

Notes
(1) Gartner Business Executive Survey, 2009, Gartner, Inc., 25 March 2009 by Mark Raskino and Jorge Lopez

About Fujitsu
Fujitsu is a leading provider of IT-based business solutions for the global marketplace. With approximately 175,000 employees supporting customers in 70 countries, Fujitsu combines a worldwide corps of systems and services experts with highly reliable computing and communications products and advanced microelectronics to deliver added value to customers. Headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.6 trillion yen (US$47 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2009. For more information, please see: www.fujitsu.com.

About Fujitsu America, Inc.
Fujitsu America, Inc. provides a complete portfolio of business technology services, computing platforms, and industry solutions. Fujitsu platform products are based on scalable, reliable and high-performance server, storage, software, point-of-sale, and mobile technologies. Fujitsu combines its renowned platform offerings with a full suite of onshore, near shore and offshore system integration, outsourcing, and datacenter services covering applications, operations, infrastructure, customer service, and multi-vendor lifecycle services. Fujitsu provides industry-specific solutions for retail, manufacturing, healthcare, government, education, financial services, and telecommunications sectors. For more information on Fujitsu America's business scope, visit http://solutions.us.fujitsu.com/.

Fujitsu, the Fujitsu logo and Interstage are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fujitsu Limited in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks and product names are the property of their respective owners.

The statements provided herein are for informational purposes only and may be amended or altered by Fujitsu Limited without notice or liability. Product description data represents Fujitsu design objectives and is provided for comparative purposes; actual results may vary based on a variety of factors. Specifications are subject to change without notice.

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